20th November 2006 Archive

"We advise you to reconsider your need to travel to Pakistan at this time due to the very high threat of terrorist attack and the unpredictable security situation." – Australian Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade

The market for large enterprise software is set to grow at up to nine per cent a year until 2010, but the software support service will suffer a slump in growth, according to market research company Ovum.

The so-called big four global accounting firms, together with two of the major second tier firms, have recently proposed that the current historic reporting of corporate financial results, quarterly or half yearly, should be replaced by real time reporting.

Toshiba has announced what may be the world's second 8GB SDHC memory card. Alas, Pretec announced just such a product back in September, but Toshiba's card is faster. It's a Class 4 device - Pretec's was a Class 2.

Intel may be set to slash the prices of its current Pentium 4 processors in January 2007, it has been claimed by Chinese PC manufacturer sources. The allegation essentially re-iterates claims we reported on back in September.

A trip to St John's in Cambridge (England) provides an opportunity to see innovation in action. And one of the pioneers of Cambridge Technology - Dr Herman Hauser of Amadeus - was there this year to explain how it all came about - and to take modest credit for the effect.

HTC today unveiled its latest smart phone with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, this time driven by a spring-loaded mechanism. Dubbed the P4350, it appears to be the same device phone supplier Dopod announced earlier this month as the C800M.

Want to run Linux on the PlayStation 3 but can't be bothered with the hassle of installing it? Then head over to online auction site eBay where one of Sony's next-generation consoles is on offer pre-loaded with Fedora Core 5 Linux.

True freedom is protecting Americans by letting the NSA monitor their email and phone calls by the millions without a warrant, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales explained to Air Force Academy cadets in a speech last week.

Nintendo will next month ship software that will turn its DS Lite handheld games console into an MP3 player, the company's UK wing said late last week. The app will ship on 8 December - the same day the Wii goes on sale over here.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said that every user of the open source Linux system could owe his company money for using its intellectual property. The statement will confirm the worst fears of the open source community.

Two Canadians last week won their 15 minutes of fame by standing in line for two days to splash out CAD550 on a 20GB PS3s - only to take the machine straight out of the store and destroy it with a sledgehammer.

Scottish telco Thus today told investors it is cautious about the broadband business in the current climate of fierce competition, as it revealed margins on its internet services have been squeezed down to 29 per cent from 44 per cent a year ago.

Unlikely as it may seem, we have just acquired evidence that the cops in Western Australia have gone and got themselves a sense of humour. For proof, check out this search which reveals the mail server used by Australia's finest, viz: riggs.police.wa.gov.au.

Fed up with the hours it takes to encode video into the iPod- and PSP-friendly H.264 format? If so, the answer, according to video peripherals maker ADS Tech, is an H.264 encoding accelerator and, by sheer coincidence, it has one it would like to sell to you.

HP's freshest board member Ken Thompson won't need to take the company's Pretexting 101 course offering. As Wachovia's CEO, Thompson has become well acquainted with the legal concerns surrounding phone record fraud.

A couple of smaller time hardware players made a big impression on us during last week's supercomputing conference, showing their ability to extend out of just the high performance computing market. If you're in the market for speedy, compact x86 kit, then you want to check out both VXTech and Microway.